Gardener

£25-chair plastic held me there suspended, like the strings that kept you dancing around me, lit Apollo who shackled the sun to your back, friend I watched from afar as you held girls, then boys, as I counselled, bound by honour not to exploit the wrists you adorned with charity school bands - UNICEF, Teenage Cancer Trust, AIDS I was not thinking of the children but of the twitch of your fingers, placed casually on my shoulder; I wrote three drafts of your English coursework and edited three essays that year.